Although I have mentioned Wordsworth before Coleridge because he was two
years older, yet Coleridge had much to do with the opening of
Wordsworth's eyes to such visions; as, indeed, more than any man in our
times, he has opened the eyes of the English people to see wonderful
things. There is little of a directly religious kind in his poetry; yet
we find in him what we miss in Wordsworth, an inclined plane from the
revelation in nature to the culminating revelation in the Son of Man.
Somehow, I say, perhaps because we find it in his prose, we feel more of
this in Coleridge's verse.
Coleridge is a sage, and Wordsworth is a seer; yet when the sage sees,
that is, when, like the son of Beor, he falls into a trance having his
eyes open, or, when feeling and sight are one and philosophy is in
abeyance, the ecstasy is even loftier in Coleridge than in Wordsworth. In
their highest moods they seem almost to change places--Wordsworth to
become sage, and Coleridge seer. Perhaps the grandest hymn of praise
which man, the mouth-piece of Nature, utters for her, is the hymn of Mont
Blanc.
HYMN
_Before sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni._
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course--so long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc?
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.
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